How I got my domains freed from 1and1.com

I’m now trying to get 1and1 to let me move my domains that aren’t in dispute to Go Daddy.

Billing said I could, of course tech support doesn’t know their a** from a hole in the wall, so first they say ok, then they say they can’t because my account is locked.

I’ve also faxed ANOTHER letter to whomever trying to pay the domains that I do want to renew & getting them to take off the domains I canceled from the invoice. Of course I got no response back, so that’s like 3 faxes, & several e-mails & they totally ignored me.

She’s trying to tell me I should pay & then they will refund me. LOL, yeh right.

Here’s another thing that’s interesting.

transfer@1and1.com is now asking me for my password in order to verify who I am before they will unlock those domains & give me the authorization code.

I said no bloody way am I giving you my password & you should NEVER be asking for that anyway & how in the world are you able to see my password??? That goes against security 101 for any website.

No one in that company should have access to my password. It should have been encrypted, so people, just let it be known that 1and1 has access to your password when they shouldn’t.

Finally me & one of their tech support people figured out how I could solve this problem.

I changed my password to a word I would never use & I let them in.

Then for the next 2-3 months I moved sets of 4-8 domains at a time.

Whenever the 60 days that all registrars seem to hold your domain hostage was up, I’d have them unlock & unprivatize each domain so eventually all of my domains were moved.

Be aware that at times they will unlock them, but NOT unprivatize them, & so if that’s the case, you have to go into www.whois.com & check the status of your domain. Even then it may take 24-48 hours.

Many times they were inept as usual, & didn’t unprivatize, or they would tell me it was & it wasn’t. This is why it could take 3 weeks just to transfer a block of 4-6 domains at a time.

Soooo, FINALLY after about 3 months I had most of my domains transfered over.

In my 1and1 account I took screenshots of EVERYTHING which isn’t easy to do because as we all know, they only give you partial information on each page.

I left the domains that I didn’t want in the account to stay there until they expire. We will see if 1and1 tries to charge me for them.

Things to watch out for on top of EVERYTHING ELSE:

1. The expire date for your domain can change to 2 years later. LOL, boy was I shocked & confused when I saw that. That isn’t YOU who does that, it’s 1and1′s terrible backend code. It took a call or two & me & my assistant to figure out that it was ok, you get a free year, & you should just transfer it anyway.
2. It’s still not clear to me if my domains are dropping off once they expire. I don’t have time to analyze every single screenshot I have, but I think they are.
3. I recommend once that’s done that you cancel the entire account so they can’t try to run payments onto your credit card.
4. I haven’t heard back from the collection agency after I left those two messages asking to be e-mailed & then telling them that 1and1.com is a fraud, just check the numerous posts online. I do have to check my credit report to make sure they haven’t done anything to it.

I hope this helps you get your domains back. I don’t wish my experience on anyone.

I’m back with Go Daddy.

Michelle